Tag Archives: PinkBox

Under the bloody snow, that’s where they are. What’s with the weather? It’s been a thoroughly indifferent start to the trading season – a number of days lost at events to levels of mud normally seen at Glastonbury, very few of those lovely spring days, and not much warmth at all. And today we’re dodging snow and hail showers! I blame the BBC and their portentous forecasts – Carol Kirkwood, with her occluded front and cheeky smirk, telling us all that it’s all gusty winds and wintry showers.

So why does this matter? Well, it’s high time we were putting our crop plants out into the tunnels where they belong. They’re been happily growing for a little while now, all nicely potted and toasty on heated mats, but there comes a time in every chilli palnt’s life where they must be unceremoniously hauled from their cosy pot home and thrust into the soil, or possibly this year, a bigger pot. Yes folks, we’ve invested in the advanced technology of autopots with a view to increased yields, better control and – this is the most important bit – not having to do as much work next year in preparing tunnels. See, we do plan ahead! Even as I type, industrious types are thrusting plants groundwards…

On the event front we have a couple of new guys trading for us this summer…well, new-ish, as they’ve both done the occasional event before. Both Pete and Orry have significant baggage to carry round with them – Pete is a friend of Bond, and Orry is related to Jamie – but let’s hope that doesn’t get in the way of them inflicting Slayer-based pain on the chilli cognoscenti of the UK. Both have started markets with mixed success (it’s a time of the year when making a decent profit is aspirational rather than expectational) but you will see them out and around the country this summer.

With the pair of them on board there is the potential to be in ten or more locations each weekend, so we’re having to coordinate things a bit more these days. We’re even considering launching into oversaeas festivals, but of course the logistics and costs of that are quite alarming…but it might just have to be done. Watch this space!

I’ve been spending quite a lot of my time over the last few weeks helping Kerry at PinkBox Boutique with her new headquarters, a fabulous barn conversion in Coate, near Devizes. I have a vested interest as not only am I a director of her business, but she sells a hell of a lot of our stuff as well. You’ll find her and her partner Chris in Swindon on Sundays, as well as events around the country like the rest of us. Her new HQ is a great place to spend time – although I hope she doesn’t decide to expand again any time soon as we’re all sick to the back teeth of painting…and painting…and painting. The HQ was opened by the local MP last Friday morning, and we were there until midnight on Thursday putting the finishing touches on things. How we all got it ready in time I’ll never know, but it’s a testament to what can be achieved when you set youself a stupid target and then ignore all those alarm bells that keep ringing to tell you that you’re running out of time!

I’ve experienced one of those horrendous first-world problems this week. You know, the sort of thing that sends you into fits of rage although in reality it’s just not that important. You see folks – my laptop died. Now this is of course a real problem as far as my work is concerned – I need constant access to t’interweb, I track my business on a bewildering array of Excel spreadsheets, and of course e-mails are everywhere and using a phone to do this sort of thing just doesn’t hack it. But, in the grand scheme of things – when you hear about things like refugee crises, earthquakes, the Zika virus, and for heaven’s sake the terrifying prospect of Donald Trump merely continuing to exist – it just pales into insignificance. Getty angry simply because I’m having trouble recovering my iTunes library seems somewhat churlish. And of course the fact that I’m able to write this post shows that I have recovered enough data from my old laptop to set up it’s hastily-bought replacement OK.

One great, but slightly scary, piece of news is that I have my spot reserved at Salisbury Christmas Market once again. It’s something I look forward to each year now with equal doses of eager anticipation and utter fear. Costa Coffee’s takings will rise exponentially as I subsist almost entirely on double espressos and sugary snacks…a decent night’s sleep will be a distant memory…and hopefully the Salisbury Christmas Market Bewildered Traders Association will reform for moral support and ritual abuse…but it’ll be a laugh.

On the plus side, since I last posted (OK that was a while ago, but I’ve been busy – more on that later) England have regained the Ashes, Jessica Ennis-Hill and Mo Farah have won World Championship gold medals, Banksy has taken over Weston-super-Mare, and Chris Froome has won a second Tour de France. The football season is back (ermmm…yippee?), Blackadder may well be on its way back (definite yippee for that one), and a new series of Dangermouse starts next month (so much yippee for that one that I may have just had a bit of an accident).

But let’s calm down for a moment and look at the bigger picture. No wait, that’s boring.

Instead, let me tell you why I’ve been so horribly lax in my blogging of late. It’s not very exciting really, but justifiable – Chez Hobbit has relocated from Devizes to Calne. Now those of you that have moved house within recent memory will recall the butt-clenching horror that surrounds a move, and this one was made all the hairier for being a sale combined with a move to a rental property that had to be fit for cats. Now landlords the world over may love pets, but they sure as hell don’t want the pesky little buggers in their properties, and that meant a very nervous time whilst I found somewhere that was (a) large enough for all my tat, of which there is plenty (b) nice enough to sate my snobby tendencies, and (c) cat-friendly and close to family to enable cat-sitting duties when I am away.

Luckily I found a place in Calne pretty quickly, though I had to loosen the purse-strings quite considerably to make it happen. And for a few blissful moments I was chilled about it all…even got moved in OK (though not without a few bruises and scrapes to both furniture and myself), and looked forward to unpacking. Our big old cat Fudge was inserted into his new house which – with the expected level of feline disdain – simply became a different big box to lounge around in. He settled in very nicely, but then after a few days started to show signs of really not being very well at all, in an oh-my-God-he-looks-so-old kind of way. To cut a not very long story even shorter, we had to take the horrible but inevitable decision to take him for one last journey to the vet’s, where he was sent on his journey to be with his sister Cassie, who we lost earlier this year. So after all that faffing about finding a place he could be happy in, he lasted nine nights in his new home. To say that I was heartbroken would be an understatement, and the house feels…well, odd. Not only does it still feel like it’s not my house at all – still boxes everywhere, new bits of furniture, can’t find anything in the kitchen, the usual things – but now I have no cat. For the first time in 25 years I’m not opening the front door to a squeaking ball of fluff demanding food. It doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t feel normal (for my definition of normal), and it doesn’t feel like home. Not yet, anyway. It will, I am sure, but right now it just feels soulless and empty.

But the whole relocation episode has introduced a new term to me, one that came about thanks to a beery discussion in a pub in Nottingham. I was discussing the house move with Jon and Joanne from The Rather Tasty Tea People, and specifically how many of us in the western world have a propensity to hoard things and never use them. My example was cups and saucers. I have plates of three different sizes, dessert bowls and pasta bowls from the same Denby range – all of which get used regularly. But the matching cups and saucers? Unwrapped them 10 years ago in Devizes…put them in the cupboard…wrapped them up again in July…unwrapped them in August in Calne…suspect the cycle will repeat at some point in the future. All of which Jon described as ‘nomadic crockery’, which I thought was a very romantic and lyrical way of describing migratory earthenware. I have visions of teacups on majestic stallions sweeping across the Mongolian steppe, yurts in the distance…

Time for some congratulations. The Pink Chilli Hobbit, otherwise known as Kerry, has been working bloody hard to develop her company PinkBox Boutique, and she has been given a Mumpreneur 100 Award in recognition of the quality of her business and her commitment to getting it going whilst dealing with the trials and tribulations of being a mother and grandmother (oh, and the difficulties of having been married to me for a few years, but let’s gloss over that bit). Many, many congratulations to Kerry, well deserved, and of course we hope she’ll continue to be one of our band of itinerant chilli peddlers for many years to come!

You may recall in my last blog that the South of England Show was notable for the large amount of pastel-coloured corduroy trousers on display. The New Forest Show, along with frankly epic amounts of dust, departed from that theme by going for Blazer of the Day instead. There must be something about these country shows that brings out these kinds of people – you don’t see them anywhere else, with the possible exception of a Cotton Traders catalogue – but at least it gives us traders a bit of a giggle when we spot a candidate and start waving at each other in a ‘did you see that one?’ kind of way.

Shortly after my trip to Hampshire I worked at a very unusual event, a pet show near Coventry. This was notable for several things. Firstly, the wasps made their first appearance of the summer, and all I can say is that I hate the bloody things. Nasty, stripy little buggers, coming over here and stealing our jam, why don’t they bugger off back home… As a consequence I now have one of those zappy tennis racket-type things that makes a very satisfying BZZZZZZP noise when I catch one of the winged terrorists, so that’s satisfying my blood-lust somewhat.

Slighty more relaxing were the alpacas. Very cute, very skittish, very curious about the world about them, they look fab and damned well knew it. Proper posers.

The most surprising thing I saw, and had the privilege to hold, was a skunk. A lot bigger than I’d anticipated, and one of the most chilled-out, relaxed critters I’ve ever had the good fortune to cuddle. Not in the least bit smelly and really relaxed, he was virtually asleep as soon as his owner handed him over to me. Not called Pepe le Pew though, which I thought was virtually the law, like all spiders being called Boris.

Lastly was the Burmese Python. Big, heavy, and lovely to hold, he was definitely not of the cuddly variety, but if any of you have held a snake before you’ll know that they are gloriously silky smooth and not creepy at all.

One thing that I saw, it being a pet show and all that, was several of what I like to call ‘handbag dogs’ – you know, the yappy little sods that are danger of being trodden on and squished – wearing hats. Trendy baseball caps…spangly peaked caps at rakish angles…dear God, one of them was also wearing a tutu. A bloody tutu. Now I am well aware that people will treat their pets as children, I know all too well from recent events that they are showered with love and affection…but if I made one of my girls dress up in a tutu and a spangly baseball cap I think I’d have received a 3am visit from the paramilitary wing of the NSPCC.

I’m guessing that my mood at the pet show wasn’t helped by the lack of sleep I’d had in the hotel I was using. The walls were a little on the paper-thin side, so much so that the herd of elephants in the next room managed to make more noise than two skeletons shagging in a tin bath, and to be fair I think they were only cleaning their teeth. Repeatedly. Banging cupboard doors at 4am in the process. Maybe it was the NSPCC preparing a raid…

And on that note, I will leave further rambling thoughts to another day. I’ll try not to leave it this long next time…though I think I said that last time as well 🙂

Back in the day, those of old of us to know better would watch a madman on breakfast TV who would exhort us to jump about like a lunatic, in some kind of attempt to make us get fit, or at least to make us dunk biscuits in time to music. His name was (and still is) Derrick Evans, but you may remember him better as Mr Motivator.

Now we don’t have a Derrick, but we do have a Jamie, and this week he has been our very own Mr Rotavator. It’s the time of the season when all those lovely polytunnels, ignored over the long winter months, have to be prepared for the seasons chilli goodness. So on the hottest day of the year so far (impeccable timing being our specialty) Jamie attacked the tunnels with as much gusto as could be mustered with a hangover and 40-degree temperatures. And a fine job he made of it too, the soil was actually in great condition to turn over and the job – though hot work – was done in a day. Unfortunately that’s only the first part of the preparation work – beds still have to be dug – but it’s a start.

Now I don’t want you thinking that I just sat there laughing and pointing at Jamie struggling away, whilst all I did was take a few snapshots. I did help clear the rotavator blades of all sorts of string and garden wire that had become entangled – proof positive that all those years of clearing the vacuum cleaner of my daughters’ long hair was good practice for something.

Desperately attempting to flex

Look at that concentration

I’ll see you on the other side

Somewhere to park your bike, I guess

The plants themselves are coming on in leaps and bounds. Much discussion was going on between Jamie and his Dad regarding irrigation techniques, and if the weather holds up like it has done over the past few days that’s going to be a subject of continued debate. Even on a nice April day the tunnels were nudging upwards of 40 degrees Celsius – that’s enough to melt hobbits, I can tell you.

I found the Reapers this visit. They look…malevolent. There’s something about the way they were just lurking in the corner, sort of glaring at me in a knowing way…I definitely had the feeling that somewhen, somewhere, I’m going to feel the full force of their many, many Scovilles. I’m scared Ted.

Away from the Farm it’s been another busy weekend of trading. Between us we covered events in Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Marlborough, Frome, Chippenham and Swindon. The weather on Sunday especially was lovely, though I did have the rather surreal experience of having a stall next to the Pink Chilli Hobbit (a.k.a. my ex-wife Kerry for the uninitiated, running a stall for Hive Originals) – hence the photo below.

Next weekend we’re all over the country again – Carlisle, Bristol, Nunney, Oxford, Sherston, Swindon, Thame and Newbury. It may not be world domination, but by ‘eck we’re giving it the real college try.

This is what chilli sauce does to you

On a final note, this is William. I’ve met William on a couple of occasions (this time at the Marlborough Spring Fayre) and William is a MONSTER. He has tried everything I’ve thrown at him, and despite all my best efforts he just shrugs off the heat as being ‘a bit tingly’. Most children save up their pocket money for an iPhone, or a new PS4 game, or even a new football kit. William wants to save up his pocket money for a bottle of God Is Dead.

I’d better have a word with his parents about what it says on the label…

And with that, fair reader, I will step away from the keyboard and go and watch Pointless. It’s not all beer and skittles, you know.